Sleep Whisperer: The Outcome

I was trying to be thrifty. Instead I ended up adding years to my life.

Or at least my appearance.

I’d run out of under-eye concealer—a critical mother’s little helper—and found an old tube of it in our bathroom drawer. It was a drugstore brand. But in the harsh light of the recession, and the harsh light of day on my dark under-eye circles, I decided to give it a whirl.

And you know? It wasn’t half bad. A good color match. Good even coverage. And the spongey applicator was kinda fun.

So on a Target run with my mother-in-law I decided to get more. Expensive schmancy make-up be damned!

As I crouched down to find the right product and color I zeroed in on the shape of the tube, then read the label and staggered back in horror. What I’d been spreading on the delicate moisture-craving skin under my eyes for weeks was not some creamy emollient make-up. It was tinted zit cream.

Aaack!

The last time I had a zit I had a Michael Jackson poster hanging in my bedroom. (It was this one, if you must know.)

Anyway, I have sisters who are 10, 11, and 12 years older than me. I learned at a wee tender age the critical importance—the necessity—of a good eye cream. When my sibs were in their twenties, experiencing their first anxieties over sun exposure and laugh lines, I was a smooth-skinned tween. My sister Judith saw me as someone with the potential to capture her youth. So she hooked me up.

I had to be the only 12-year-old on the block religiously using Christian Dior eye cream twice daily (dabbing it on gently with my ring finger so as not to pull at that delicate wrinkle-prone skin).

So this recent mishap with the mistakenly-applied harsh, drying zit cream has undoubtedly set me back dog years. Benzoil peroxide, you have robbed me of my youth.

At least I’ve gained back some beauty rest to balance it all out. Yes, party people, the update on the Sleep Whisperer, the Snooze Czar, the Sand Woman—the person we paid excessive amounts of money to get our three-year-old to finally frickin’ give up the ghost and sleeeeeep—is this….

[Drum roll please.]

On Wednesday PAIGE SLEPT THROUGH THE NIGHT.

And really, not just that. She went to sleep and didn’t call out to us once. We put her to bed, and then—she slept! Until she got up in the morning!

It’s like a miracle.

Of course, last night she got up once. But really—once! That’s just a little bit! It’s a helluva lot less than getting up the many many times we’d miserably gotten used to.

And that’s only four days into our new program. So I’m still willing to allow for a learning curve.

What’s funny is, I was totally skeptical at first. Ms. Very Expensive Sleep Helper Lady came to our house Monday evening for our first meeting. I had a mild hide-the-People-magazines sorta freak-out in the moments before her arrival. But I pushed past that.

When I answered the door I drank in everything about her.

She was a bit older than I’d expected. She sat on the couch, all smiley and friendly. She said she liked how our living room was decorated. She munched on the nuts I’d set out. She was the spitting image of my friend Jill’s mom.

There was every reason to like this woman, but as we launched into our meeting I grew concerned. She didn’t have a clipboard. She didn’t goose-steep through Paige’s room making observations and jotting notes while skeptically muttering “uh-huh” under her breath.

If this woman was going to solve this nasty problem, shouldn’t she be more stern, or clinical, or ruthless?

Instead, she was mellow and friendly. She was NICE.

We chatted for a while, then Mark’s mom and the girls came back from their dinner. Nice Sleep Specialist made cute “what’s your dolly’s name?” type small talk with the girls. And then she and Paige went into Paige’s room for A TALK.

Mark was all hopping around on one foot wanting to eavesdrop. I was at the point where if this stranger was hypnotizing my daughter in order to make her sleep through the night—or threatening or terrorizing her in some way—I mean, as long as it worked, I was game.

They emerged from the room and Sleep Lady announced, “Paige has told me something very interesting. She said that it’s Baba [her lamb lovey] who wakes her up at night. And that is why she then calls out to you.”

What ensued was this: A conversation in which it was explained to Paige that Mom and Dad need their sleep. If they get woken up in the middle of the night, they don’t get their rest and can’t do a good job at work and will be cranky.

At which point Kate (who is heretofore written out of the will), chimed in, “My mother is ALWAYS cranky.”

Grrrrreeeeaaat!

Instead of hiding my People magazines I should have considered hiding Kate.

Anyway, what the Soul Sister of Sleep did was flipped the dynamic a bit. Paige was to say “shhh” to Baba in the night if Baba woke her up. This way Paige was no longer the bad guy. She was the good guy who we were enlisting in the effort to get mom and dad a good night’s sleep.

I was leery.

First off, were none of us going to cop to the fact that Baba wasn’t really the one doing the waking up? Were all the grown-ups going to play along with Paige flagrantly shirking responsibility for it all?

Apparently “at this age” (i.e. three years old) it’s easier for kiddos to test out new behaviors or express themselves via a proxy. Have the teddy bear use the potty. Show me on this doll what happened to you. Yadda yadda yadda.

Weirdly, it WORKED. I mean, it kinda didn’t really take on the first night. But we all kept talking trash about Baba needing to stop pestering Paigey when he woke up. She still bellowed to us a few times from her bed, and Mark went in to remind her to tell Baba, “Shhh.”

The next night we were told to ratchet things up a level. To close the bedroom door if she called out to us. She hates having the door closed, and screams her head off.  But what I liked was we only had to do it for five minutes. Then we’d open it and ask Paige if she and Baba wanted to take another chance at being quiet.

Night three: Bliss! In fact, I was lying awake intermittently wondering if and when she’d wake up. She never did. Our house was oddly quiet.

I did notice in that time that our refrigerator produces one ice cube every twenty minutes. This is apparently the kind of huge insight I’ll be making with my new-found well-restedness.

Well, that and I’m planning to start accusing stuffed animals of my own indiscretions. The next time Kate publicly calls me out for crankiness I’m casting all the blame on Barbie.

Uncle!

“So, Louie next door?” my mom said. (This was some years back). “Turns out he’s a necrophiliac.” She announced this quite matter-of-factly.

Louie, our long-time neighbor at the house I grew up in, certainly qualified as a small-town eccentric. One of those men who never married. Not that that’s so odd, but he always lived with his parents. Eventually—years ago when I was a kid—they died of old age, and he just stayed on in the house.

Louie must be in his seventies now, and I doubt the guy’s ever had a girlfriend. But I also couldn’t imagine him with, well—with a corpse.

“Whaaat?” I bellowed at my mother. She was imparting this freakish tidbit with the emotion she might use to mention we were out of paper towels.

“Well the other day I was in the yard,” she explained, somewhat defensively. “And I went to the side of the house to rake. I looked up and there’s Louie, lying down in the middle of his garden. I thought, ‘Ohhh God, he’s had a heart attack!’ I thought he was dead.”

“Wait, so what—?” I asked, wondering how this was going to tie into his predilection for necrophilia. “Was he spooning with a dead body?”

Mom looked at me confused, and forged on with her story. “So I dropped my rake and ran toward him and the closer I got I started to hear snoring! And it turns out he’d been out weeding and—” she snaps her fingers, “he fell asleep! Just like that! Keeled over on top of his tomato plants. After I shook him awake he told me he just got diagnosed with necrophilia. You know, that disease where all of a sudden you fall asleep.”

“Mom!” I moaned. “Necrophilia is when people are into having sex with dead bodies. What Louie has is called nar-co-lep-sy!”

Ah, what a difference a few syllables make.

When I was just in Little Rhody, I bumped into Louie when I was in the old ‘hood. And as it turns out he didn’t nod off during our brief conversation. But I nearly did.

I wish I could peg my exhaustion to something glamorous like jet lag (“Just in from Paris and mon Dieu! Je suis fatiguee!“) or a night of reckless partying. I’d even accept staying up late writing as an enviable reason for sleepiness. Alas, it was none of those. Just standard mommy fare.

And I don’t want to name any names here, but it’s all Paige’s fault.

Miss Paigey came home from the hospital a star sleeper. She snoozed through 12-hour nights consistently as an older baby. You’d toss her in her crib and she’d fall asleep on her own—no excessive nursing or rocking required. It was brag-worthy stuff.

It wasn’t until age two-and-a-half, newly installed in her Big Girl Bed, that our taken-for-granted nights of sweet slumber were suddenly shot to shit.

Yes, any glimmer of desire I’ve had to ever have a third child has been beaten out of me slowly and painfully by Paige. Because she’s been waking up several times a night since last July—let’s see, that’s NINE LONG EXHAUSTED MONTHS AGO.

Here’s the routine: She’s miserable getting to sleep—coming out of her room or bellowing from her bed multiple times. Then in the deep of night she calls out to us (or rather me: “Mama!”) and Mark or I get up and tell her it’s time to go to sleep. And she does. Until the next time she gets up and yells for us again.

So I’m getting all the sleep deprivation a newborn provides, without the weight loss from breast feeding. Though if this continues much longer I’m considering getting the girl back on the boob. Hey, I mean, she’s three years old, but I’d like to get some benefit from all these REM interruptions.

If each night isn’t grueling enough, we’re all too aware that every new one we pass this way cements this despicable pattern more firmly into place. We know we have to make it stop, but we’ve got NO IDEA what to do.

I’m a huge champion of calling the pediatrician for anything. And I’m always telling other folks to do the same. Someone’s kid is being weird about potty training? Cawl the dawk-tuh, I say. Toddler won’t eat anything but mac and cheese? See if your pediatrician has advice. Don’t know what color to paint your living room? You’d be surprised what that man can help you with.

So, of course, when Paige suddenly started erupting in the night like Old Faithful, I took my own advice and dialed the doc. I had, for all intents and purposes, a monkey jumping on the bed.

Mama called the doctor and the doctor said—? Well, the doctor said, “Say the same thing to her. Don’t make it fun for her to visit with you in the night. Be boring.”

Boring. Right-o!

So, we’ve tried that. Our sentence: “It’s time to go to sleep, Paige” is droned with such emotionless monotone that Mark and I should both be awarded Oscars for how fantastically boring we can act.

Weeks—now months—have gone by. Boring has gotten us nowhere.

We’ve threatened to close her door if she doesn’t stop yelling at night. We’ve made chart after chart to recognize her (rare) full nights of sleep. We’ve warned the neighbors and spent nights trying to ignore her wails. I’ve stayed with her until she’s fallen asleep, and brought her into our bed after her sixth wake-up.

NOTHING works.

I’ve scoured BabyCenter, The Motherboard, and Mamapedia seeking the wisdom of pediatric pundits, sleep specialists, and other mamas. I even posted on some message boards seeking advice—something I’d never done before. I got gratifying misery-loves-company responses: “I have no advice, because I am going through the same thing you are. I just wanted you to know that you are not alone in this! My 3yo does the same thing.”

And I’ve gotten tips—most of which we’ve already tried—or couldn’t. We don’t, for example, have a dog that can bunk in Paige’s room with her. And we’re leery of approaches that involve Mark or I huddled in a sleeping bag on the floor by her bed. Seems some things just substitute another bad habit we’ll eventually have to break.

But one piece of advice drew me in. A mama suggested we get this $23 turtle that’s a hybrid stuffed animal and nightlight. Said her kid loved it. There are buttons on the turtle’s shell so the kiddo can turn it on easily themselves. It projects stars onto the walls and ceiling, and stays on for 45 minutes then turns itself off. Paige gets up in the night? Don’t call for Mom or Dad, just hit the button, see the lights, and go back to sleep!

Brilliant.

I clicked the “Two Day 1-Click” button on Amazon with the smug sense that I’d solved this nasty problem. I showed Paige a picture of our dazzling sleep solution (so simple! a turtle!) and she loved the idea. In fact, she was heartbroken that night when I told her it hadn’t already come in the mail. (She’s got high expectations for Amazon Prime.)

When it did arrive, I gently carried the box in from the porch like it was a fragile priceless relic. Herein laid the solution to our endless stream of shitty nights of sleep. I nearly wept with joyful optimism.

At bedtime that night we turned on the turtle she’d named Tina and Paige screamed, “No! Light off! NO TINA!!!”

Alrighty then. On to Plan G. Or are we on Plan H by now?

Big Sis Kate, who I think of as my Second Lieutenant Mother, even has some skin in the game. Last week she made a totemic construction paper chain and gravely taped it to the headboard of Paige’s bed. “Here’s how it works, Paigey,” she explained in her most patronizing tone. “If you wake up in the night, you just reach up and shake it. Then you’ll fall back asleep.”

Yeah, a nice idea, but that hasn’t worked so much.

Finally, finally, we can’t take it any more. Mark and I are crying out “Uncle!” to anyone who’ll listen, and lying in our bed, limp with fatigue, waving white flags.

Which is to say, we’ve decided to pony up $150 an hour for a sleep specialist.

But here’s how it is with me. On the days of my long-awaited haircuts, my hair looks fabulous. I bring my car in for a rattling noise, and on the drive over it suddenly disappears. If I want to get over the flu, I just make a doctor’s appointment.

I’m not sure what this means. That I procrastinate long enough that whatever was ailing me gives up the fight?

Of course, the thing is, once you see one of these patterns emerging you think you can harness it, right? Like how many couples do you know (or have you heard of) who’ve had fertility issues then decided to file adoption papers—with no real desire to adopt. I mean, everyone knows you get knocked up the second you have your home study, right?

Yawning and bottomed-out, I finally emailed the Sleep Whisperer—a nurse who got several five-star Yelp reviews from formerly irritable parents who have, under her guidance, successfully gotten their kids some shut-eye. All without mention of restraint straps, door locks, or duct-taping mouths—though God knows at this point I’m open to anything.

And the next night, A MIRACLE HAPPENED. Paige slept through the night. We woke up Sunday morning—at like 8AM. Feeling oddly well-rested I turned to Mark and ventured, “How many times did she get up?”

And he said, “SHE DIDN’T.”

I immediately emailed the friends we’d hung out with the night before. I was mildly hysterical. “Paige slept through the night. So we are now coming to your house for dinner every night. We must  replicate everything about last night, including outfits, food—even conversation. Think of it like Groundhog Day. Eventually we’ll come to love the ritual of it all.”

I was certain that the Universe laughed at me the minute I was willing to shoot up a flare for help. But I didn’t care. It was over. Our long national tragedy was coming to an end.

But then the next night she got up roughly a million frickin’ times.

Our meeting with the sleep specialist is Monday. I have no idea what she is going to recommend, but I can assure you we will follow her directives with OCD precision.

If this fails, I’m not sure what we’ll do.

I guess we could spring for a plane ticket to have Louie come visit. Maybe if he and Paige spent some quality time together she’d pick up on his knack for falling asleep.

The Cold Hard Truth

I’m doing my yippy-doodle dance. This is something everyone does, right? I mean, their own versions, of course.

The reason for my outpouring of glee? Well, yesterday my most-excellent frienda Brenda called to tell me there’s a chance—what seems to be a WICKED GOOD chance—that she’s moving to California. And that happens to be where I live. Hooray!

Now I know it’s a big state. It’s not like my homeland, Little Rhodey, where someone asks you if you know a guy from there and half the time it turns out that you do, and that you actually went to prom with him. But where Brenda would move is like—wait, let me check my phone—81.2 miles from here.

So, even though the gal is flush with offers from other places too, she started rambling on, saying if she took the one near us she’d be close enough to come hang out for the weekend. To be a regular at our bourbon-punch Christmas bash. Close enough TO COME TO THE GIRLS’ BIRTHDAY PARTIES.

Now, if she doesn’t move here, her having dangled that in front of me is nothing short of emotional abuse. I’m already far far down the path of picturing Auntie Brenda twisting balloons and doing face painting in our backyard, then staying late to read to the girls before she tucks ‘em into bed. I’m already misty-eyed over how she’ll make my stroller-addicted kids into fierce back-country hikers. I’m laying plans for watching her dog when she travels for work.

My sister- and brother-in-law move every few years, on accounta he’s in the Coast Guard. As the gal who wept when her mother sold her childhood home nearly two decades after having actually lived there—I find the concept of moving often scary. But ya do what you need to do. And my sister-in-law maintains that her best friends are scattered all over the country anyway. So where she lives makes little difference. It’s a varying degree of distance from someone whose area code she’s already used to dialing. If she’s lucky, she gets to stay in the same time zone as her besties.

And even though I always thought of this as her situation, the fact is, some of the people I’d populate on my desert island if I had only 10 others to take with me—some of my nearest and dearest chums in the whole wide universe I’ve come to accept I’ll never live next to. At least until the time comes when I’m ordered to collect them for our move to a desert island.

So anyway, suddenly the thought of frienda-Brenda closeness is at hand. And I really hope I don’t have to do the UN-yippy-doodle dance if she decides to take some other gig. Like, I hope the other far-away company doesn’t have a better 401K plan or something.

That would suck.

Speaking of sucking, the night before we flew to Rhode Island I was reading a bedtime story to Kate. A library book. And I know, I know. I was just talking to a teacher-friend, and I know I should be reading all these kids’ books myself first. But I hadn’t. And the plot took an unexpected twist and some robbers broke into a store.

And as it turned out, the robbers were stymied by the happy accident of a whistling tea kettle going off. That somehow had the burglars thinking a police siren was zooming their way. So they never got away with the goods.

But despite justice prevailing, I closed the book and turned to Kate who had her duvet pulled up to her chin and a terrified look on her face.

“Are there still robbers, Mom?” she asked with a squeak.

Me: “Still? Um, well, uh….

Kate: “Like do robbers just break into stores, or do they go into people’s houses too?”

Me: “Well, I mean generally there’s much more reason to go into a store, right? I mean, stores have cash registers, and robbers certainly do like cash…”

Kate: “But there aren’t robbers in Oakland are there?”

Me: “Here?! In OAKland?! [Fake laughter.] Oh, no, no, nooooo! No robbers here. No reason for you to worry, sweetie. You just get some sleep now because tomorrow we’re going on the airplane to see Grandpa!”

Of course, I have these conversations—I get trapped with some horrible truth I have to share—and it’s inevitably before bed. When I have one foot out the door into the freedom of a child-free evening. And I can just envision what the truth will bring. How I’ll be up all night counseling a sobbing, freaked-out child. The temptation to stop parenting—if only for the two hours before I konk out on the couch myself—is too great. And so I can’t help myself.

I lie!

Inevitably Mark is standing in the kitchen, washing dishes after dinner. And he’ll shake his head and just stare forward out the window into the dark night and mutter to himself, “Nope! No burglars in Oakland…”

Because Mark is a truth-talker. I mean, I know that’s a good thing. And I know what I’m doing isn’t necessarily the right approach. But sometimes I’m at a total loss for what either of us should do.

Like Friday night. We were at dinner at my sister’s in SF. We had two cars with us since Mark met us there after work. And as is often the case, Kate wanted to ride home with Mark, and my barnacle, Paigey, wanted to stay suctioned tightly onto me.

When we got home and tucked the kids in, Mark came into our room where I was changing into my most sexy and alluring flannel granny nightgown. (I am SO on-fire in that thing.)

And Mark says, as if he’s mentioning he had a ham sandwich for lunch, that he happened to tell Kate about 9/11 in the car ride home.

“You WHAT?!” I bellowed, yanking the ruffled yoke of flannel down over my head. “You just kind of casually happened to tell her about 9/11?!”

“Well, it’s not like I brought it up,” he said, all calm. “I mean, we were looking at the skyscrapers downtown, and then she asked me what the tallest building in New York was, and I said, ‘Well, it’s the Empire State building now.’”

“NOW?” I shout-whispered, so as not to wake the children. “You said NOW?”

“Well, yeah,” he said, innocently stepping into his striped PJ bottoms. “I mean, I didn’t stress the word, but I said it. And she totally zoned in on it, and asked me what did I mean by ‘now.’ And then I told her about 9/11.”

And oddly, just minutes after that conversation—which Mark claimed wasn’t rife with gory details—Kate was already drifting off to sleep peacefully in her room. We weren’t dialing some 1-800-SCARED-KID hot line. The terrorists apparently weren’t going to win this one.

“Huh,” I said. “Well… do you want to watch Top Chef?”

I think it’s awesome and brave of Mark to talk to Kate about things like this. I need to test the waters more here and butch up to the fact that she can handle it. I need to exhibit more risk-taking behavior when, at the end of a long day of parenting, there might be something that might trigger me to have to spend more time Mamaing. Like, maybe Kate would’ve just said “oh” if I told her sometimes robbers do break into houses, and sometimes it even happens in our happy little hamlet, Oakland.

Last year, when Kate was a wee preschooler (not the sophisticated, worldly kindergartener she is today), I told her about what happened in Haiti. Which led to her asking the inevitable, “Are there ever earthquakes here, Mama?”

And of course, I said, “Here?! Earthquakes in the San Francisco Bay Area?! Why… noooooo!”

I mean, even I felt bad about that doozey of a lie. But really, what was I going to say? “Yes! Why, we’re just a mile or so from a fault line! In fact, we have an earthquake kit packed in our garage with a crowbar and food, and water, and diapers and lots of one-dollar bills so we’re ready for what people refer to as The Big One—a quake of devastating proportions that could level our house, incite looting and rioting, and have public utilities down for days! We also have meeting places established in San Francisco and Oakland in case Daddy’s on the other side of the bridge at work and, well, in case the whole bridge breaks and falls into the water! (All the cell phone lines will probably be tied up.) In fact, most of the people who we meet when we’re away from home think we’re stark-raving mad for living here and ask us, ‘Aren’t you afraid of earthquakes?’ ”

Why yes, honey. We may have great sourdough bread and those big purdy Redwood trees, but the reality is, we live in a primo spot for earthquakes. Heck, and for robbers too!

But do me a favor and don’t let your Auntie Brenda know.  Let’s just let this be our little secret.

Mothering Out of Bounds

I’m unstoppable. As a mother, that is. And before you hit Play on that Helen Reddy eight-track tape, let me clarify. I don’t mean this as a good thing.

I’m not sure when exactly it started, but I’ve become the person who pulls a Kleenex from my purse for the guy who sneezes behind me in a store check-out line. I’m the daft Perpetual Baby Smiler—never letting any beings under the age of one pass me by without cocking my head, beaming, and saying, “Awww…” I’m the woman standing idiotically in the family-boarding area, even in the rare instances I’m flying without my kids.

Aside from wondering where the hell the old Me went—the one who thought of herself as an individual, not just part of a family unit—aside from that, well, hell, it’s just that this new Me can be so horribly annoying.

If you don’t believe me, ask Mark. We’re deep into this issue he and I. Totally aware of it and working on it, but like some bad rainy-season ant infestation, it just keeps coming back. You know, you spray-slaughter all the ants around the basement door, and next think you know they’ve forming a line trooping through your dining room, swarming over a fallen lump of last week’s oatmeal. It’s the kind of problem you’re certain you will never ever get a handle on.

What exactly am I talking about? Good question. It’s this: I’m a backseat parent.

Mark will be halfway though answering Kate’s plea for dessert, or helping Paige track down her tap shoes and I’ll jump in—totally interrupting, bombarding unheeded—and I’ll start dispatching orders. “Kate, you need to take three more bites of broccoli before I’ll even consider dessert.” “Paige, your tap shoes are in your ballet box on the top shelf of your closet. Do NOT wear them on the hardwood floors.”

Man, it’s annoying.

We’ve talked about this but I still can’t manage to make myself stop. The best explanation I can muster is that I spend my days responding to an endless stream of kid-borne issues. Things that come flying at me mercilessly like centipedes in a video game. To ward them off, I have to aim a kind of Ghostbusters-esque task-zapping uzi at them—Zap! Zap! Zap!—in order to get us to the next level, which is usually something like out the door, down the steps, and into the car for school, with everybody’s clothing on and hair combed.

I’m so used to single-handedly dealing with what life throws at me during the day, that when Mark’s there and I so much as sense that some kid-issue is incoming, I automatically kick into gear, guns blazing. Even though I know Mark can totally handle it on his own.

I guess I’m kinda trigger happy.

We’ve joked that I need classical conditioning to change. But really, more than the salt-lick reward I think what I need is an electric cattle prod deterrent every time I do it.

And just ’cause I have a maternal reflex to do something, doesn’t mean it’s necessarily the right thing to do. I may be feeling over-programmed in the Mama arts, but I’m still doing dopey things like consistently forgetting to carry diapers, and leaving a baggy of Alleve in my purse where Paige can get into it. (Kate recently called out to me, “Paige is about to eat some blue pills she found in your purse!” Guess I need to take to heart this Motherboard tip about stowing my bag at higher ground.)

The younger brother of my most-excellent wonderful and good friend, Mike, is moving to Oakland. I’m all hopped up about this because if I drink enough, turn down the lights, and really squint I can kind of make myself believe that Mike’s brother is really him. Although it turns out that in the sober light of unsquinty day I actually like his brother for who he is. Go figure.

Until he’d found a place to live, Mike’s Brother stayed with us. Just for a handful of days.

And you know what? I think I mothered the poor guy to death! I found myself texting him in the afternoons. Would he be home for dinner? When he was out late one night I went to our chilly guest room to turn on the space heater so the room would be cozy when he got back. One morning I made him—no, foisted upon him after an initial refusal—cinnamon toast. And while shopping at Target, I stumbled upon the map section (those old-school paper things). And I grew inextricably concerned that he needed an Oakland-Berkeley map in order to carry out his house-search. So I bought it for him.

I didn’t do his laundry. And if he sneezed, I left him to figure out like a big boy where to find a Kleenex (on the back of the toilet in any of the bathrooms, and on the bedside tables in every bedroom). I didn’t do those things, but I do have a hazy memory of shouting into the bathroom at him that he was welcome to take any of the towels in the linen closet.

Is all this me smother-mothering someone? Sure, it’s my friend’s younger brother, but the dude’s a grown man with a wife and child of his own. Maybe what I was doing was what any hostess worth her weight in fresh hand towels would do. But in my mind—these days I’m feeling so super centrally Mom-like—I can’t help but think I’m just inappropriately taking those who aren’t even my offspring under my wing.

It’s like in those cooking shows when the reality show chefs sautee a piece of meat. As they hold it over the heat they keep spooning the pan juices over the top again and again. It’s like they’re super-imbuing the meat with extra flavor of itself. It sometimes feels like that with me and my Mama self. Do what I will, every act no matter how juvenile, self-serving, or un-nurturing, still becomes a reinforcement of my essential Mamaness. And the more I wish it were otherwise, the more it seems inescapable (See: The coating of pastel sidewalk chalk on my black biker boots).

Last week the girls and I flew east like confused geese veering off course for winter. The rest of humanity–or at least Kate’s classmates—were all bound for warmer tropical venues, or the ski slopes in Tahoe. But we were simply seeking snow. Sea level snow was fine with us. Along with some quality time with Gramp and Grandma Joan.

And despite the incessant string of blizzards all winter there, the East Coast snow had nearly melted altogether. (Unless you count the mud-splattered ice piles in the far reaches of parking lots.) We were granted only one light dusting, from which we made the teensiest most tragic snowman ever—akin to the pitiful wee Stonehenge in Spinal Tap.

Add to that the fact that back in the Bay Area, meteorologists were flipping their Doppler radars over the potential for snow in San Francisco—something that’s hit the history books something like six times. Thankfully, the SF snow was a no-show, so I didn’t have to berate myself for sidestepping exactly what I was trying to get to the heart of.

Anyway, pardon the weather outburst. Where was I? Oh yes, Rhode Island. Where we love nothing more than the little local library. And where I found the DVD E.T. and decided to indoctrinate Kate in some non-princess-based media.

Of course, she wailed and lamented. Why didn’t she get to pick the movie? Couldn’t she watch Angelina Ballerina—or even a cooking show (what she came to simply call “Ina” in the course of the week) instead?

The movie was rated PG for language (one kid calls another “penis-breath”) and something else I don’t remember. I’d intended for Kate to watch it while Paigey napped. But of course Paige refused sleep, and before I knew it we were all piled on the leather couch tuned in.

And can I just say, E.T.’s death scene is unbearably protracted? I mean, the scene in which he’s zipped in a body bag (one that fits oddly-perfectly for such a uniquely-shaped corpse) and left for dead. I kept checking the girls to see if they were experiencing severe emotional trauma, but they seemed to not really register (or care) what was happening. Maybe they thought E.T. was just being kept fresh in a large Ziplock.

Finally Elliot—who thrillingly shares a name with Paige’s erstwhile boyfriend—brings E.T. back to life by invoking the magic words “I love you.” (I wonder if Kate’s teachers tried that with Freezey…) I thought I’d dodged the bullet. But it wasn’t ’til after the hair-raising final bike ride scene, when E.T. was saying his goodbyes before boarding the space ship home, that Paige—who had been otherwise engaged in playing with the dog and flipping through books—suddenly burst into tears. Wailing sobbing miserably inconsolable tears.

“T.C.!” she wailed to the ceiling. “Teeeeee Ceeeeeeeee!!!” she blubbered in a mistakenly-monogrammed moan. This went on for quite some time. And since it was so sudden, I was trying desperately to diagnose the depth of her sorrow. She’d not even been watching the TV when her anguish first erupted.

“What’s wrong, Paigey?” I pleaded. “What are you so sad about?” I asked, hoping she’d say she just ran out of milk in her sippy cup.

No dice. The woe, she reported, was directly related to “T.C. having gone away.” And, as if to spell it out to her moronic mother who clearly wasn’t getting it, she mumbled tragically, “It makes my heart hurt.”

Meanwhile Kate was on my left, watching the movie with the detachment one reserves for ads for professional training institutes.

I was flustered, trying to give Paige some happy thoughts to redirect her emotions. “He’s going home, Paigey!” I offered brightly.

Then Kate added, sighing with the bored air of a teen, “Yeah, Paige. E.T.’s okay. He’s going to see his Mommy.”

Which got me thinking. No one ever really wondered about what E.T.’s poor mother went through the whole time he was having his earthly escapade. Right? I mean, think of the stress one endures losing a child in the mall. Now take that up a few million notches to having them missing on another planet. Sheesh!

I imagine their conversation when he got back on the spaceship went something like:

E.T.’s Mom: “Oh my God, you’re BACK! Come here—I love you so much!”

E.T.: “Hey, Ma. Yeah, I’m fiiiiine.”

E.T.’s Mom: [Holding E.T. at wrinkly brown arms length] “Listen to ME, young alien. Don’t you EVER hop off the spaceship and run away again! I was worried SICK!”

Of course, if I were her I’d also scold him that he didn’t have a sweater on. But that’s just me.